The silt-laden Minnesota River, lighter-looking as it runs from left to right, joins the cleaner Mississippi River coming from the north, near Fort Snelling. Federal rules require the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to find ways to reduce the amount of silt reaching Lake Pepin, farther down the Mississippi River where it widens southeast of the Twin Cities. (Photo courtesy of Area Commission)

Already hamstrung by tight budgets, communities across much of Minnesota are bracing for what could be an $843 million bill – this one aimed at reducing the amount of sediment reaching Lake Pepin on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border.

And many resent having to pay so much for what amounts to a relatively small bump in water quality. Especially while agriculture, a much larger source of sediment, is let off the hook.

“This kind of thing is just beyond the pale for what is acceptable and what we feel is how we should be spending our taxpayers’ money,” said Klayton Eckles, Woodbury’s city engineer.

The developing urban-rural tiff will get new legs soon when the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency releases a study explaining the sediment problem, establishing goals and outlining ways to reduce the amount of silt getting into Lake Pepin, the widening of the Mississippi River southeast of the Twin Cities.

A draft calls for cutting sediment reaching the lake, which has been filling in for decades, by 25 percent. But the enforced diet, required by the federal Clean Water Act, has some built-in inequities.

The act requires the MPCA to regulate communities with stormwater systems, but gives it no such leverage over agriculture, leaving voluntary solutions as the only way to lessen rural runoff.

As a result, 217 cities, townships and other operators of separate storm sewer systems within the so-called South Metro Mississippi Watershed will be asked to comply with tighter standards. More specific orders will come later.

Contributing almost 6 percent of Lake Pepin’s sediment problem, the communities across the central part of the state will be told to cut their sediment runoff by one-fourth, or 1.4 percent of the total problem.

With a projected $33-a-pound price tag to reduce it, the total tab could reach $843 million. Credit, however, would be given for work done since varying baseline periods were established in the 1990s.

“That is a staggering amount of money to achieve a minuscule load reduction relative to the total load reduction to the lake,” said Randy Neprash, a civil engineer and staff member for the Minnesota Cities Stormwater Coalition.

Farmers, meanwhile, chafe at the notion that they’re not working to lessen the problem, according to Warren Formo, executive director of the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resource Center.

“This is such a complex issue, and some folks are trying to melt it down to be too basic to capture what’s happening in the watershed,” Formo said.

Already, he said, many farmers have modified tilling practices, installed terraces and planted buffer strips to control erosion and runoff into streams and rivers.

Increasingly, researchers are identifying streambank erosion, caused by higher water flows, with boosting sediment levels in rivers. They and other observers hypothesize that those higher levels are caused at least in part by tilling of agricultural land, draining more rainwater off the land more quickly.

But Formo said that’s too simplistic.

“Not all drainage systems are the same,” he said, pointing out that some move water more quickly than others. “We need to figure out how to maintain drainage without adverse effects.”

That and other approaches require more research, an approach he contended has yielded results and offers more promise.

The final report could be released next month, but the draft puts 90 percent of the problem on nonpoint sources. Most of the blame goes to the Minnesota River watershed, with two-thirds of the sediment coming from erosion of ravines, gullies and stream banks and the rest from farm fields.

Formo questioned whether the data are precise enough.

But representatives of cities say any way things are sliced, they still will probably pick up too much of the tab because they’re the only ones the MPCA can go after.

“We are the only control the state agencies have to show they are reducing the pollution load even though it does not make any sense in terms of cost efficiency,” said Craig Johnson, intergovernmental relations director for the League of Minnesota Cities.

Likely options include tightening runoff standards dealing with new developments beyond standards already in place. That will be tougher for cities such as St. Paul, which already are highly developed.

“I would like to think we have done a number of things in anticipation of these regulations,” said Anne Hunt, St. Paul’s environmental policy director. “But yes, there potentially are additional financial impacts. How much of that would be to the city of St. Paul, I don’t think we have that figure at this point.”

“No one really knows how to do that calculation,” Neprash said. “It’s going to vary from city to city.”

Trevor Russell, watershed program director for the advocacy group Friends of the Mississippi River, agreed that developed cities will have to work harder.

“There is just not that much sediment in everyday urban runoff,” he said. “It’s paved-over soil, soil under pavement. It isn’t moving a lot.”

Agriculture, especially in the Minnesota River watershed, should be held more accountable, he said.

“Downstream communities are being asked to step up because upstream ag pollution isn’t being addressed efficiently,” Russell said. “If you live in a downstream city, not only is your water quality poor, but you have to pay more because there isn’t a requirement for reductions in upstream agriculture pollution.”

Rebecca Flood, an assistant MPCA commissioner for water policy, said she appreciates those urban concerns.

“I would say we’re sensitive to their concerns about money and the cost of doing some of these infrastructure improvements,” Flood said. “We also understand that the Clean Water Act does not treat all parties equally in terms of runoff. Farm runoff is managed differently.”

She said the agency would like agricultural interests to do even more to cut sediment runoff and has been in talks with those representatives for months.

Neprash and others aren’t blaming the MPCA.

“The state is obligated to chase the permitted ones,” Neprash said. “They have no choice.”

But he and others wish a trading program or something like it were available to move money around to achieve more. As an example, Eckles said, a community could take $350,000 that would produce minimal gains in its urban area and could spend it instead in an agricultural setting and get significantly better results.

“We actually have an enforceable federal permit that requires people in cities to meet these very specific pollution requirements,” Johnson said. “There is not a similar mechanism for agriculture. We really need to come up with a much better system for getting those results to happen on an ag setting.”

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